How I Boosted My Bookings with Direct Reservations: A Host’s Success Story

Building a direct booking strategy is essential for growing a sustainable business in a highly competitive short-term rental market. While OTAs can provide valuable exposure for your properties and help you attract potential guests, they charge hefty commission fees for bookings made through their site, which can significantly impact your profit margins.

This is where a direct booking website comes in. By allowing guests to book directly with you, you don't have to pay any OTA fees for any bookings, which means more revenue and higher profits. Hospitable can help you with that by handling the major challenges of taking direct bookings.

Our top-performing hosts prove that a direct booking website can be a profitable revenue channel. One of them is Todd Parker, a successful short-term rental host who has generated over $100k in direct bookings with the help of Hospitable! Follow on Instagram

Keep reading to get inspired by Todd's direct booking journey and learn how he has grown his business while maintaining control over his bookings. But first, let's briefly discuss how Hospitable can help you get started with direct bookings and become less dependent on OTAs.

Getting Direct Bookings with Hospitable: How It Works

Hosts who use Hospitable to streamline their operations can take advantage of its direct bookings functionality, and it's super easy to get started. You can create your direct booking website using our website builder or add a Hospitable booking widget to your self-hosted site. We'll list your properties on Google Vacation Rentals so you can get direct booking leads from Google Travel with zero investment in promotion.

With our Direct Premium offering (available in the US, the UK, and Australia), you can accept bookings without risk or stress thanks to our integrated AI-powered guest vetting, chargeback protection, and $5M damage protection. As the Merchant of Record, Hospitable manages all chargebacks and covers payment-processing fees lost on canceled and refunded bookings.

Direct Basic is our "payment processing only" option, available everywhere Stripe is supported. It's for STR hosts who have experience in taking direct bookings, are comfortable with the risks, and don't want the added safety of guest screening and damage protection. You are the Merchant of Record liable for cancellations, refunds, and chargebacks.

The third option is Direct Lite—it's for hosts with properties located in countries not supported by Stripe but who would still like to have a Direct website. With Direct Lite, you can have a direct site without payment processing and have to take payments off the platform.

We charge a 1% host fee for Direct Basic, and Stripe will deduct payment-processing fees from your payout. For Direct Premium, we charge a 4% guest service fee and a 3% host fee, including payment processing fees and all other Premium features that help you manage risks.

As you see, Hospitable Direct Premium has lower fees than popular OTA platforms, and even if you get just one direct booking per month, you can save more money than you pay for your Hospitable subscription. Once your direct booking website site is gaining more reservations, you will be increasingly less dependent on the OTA platforms for the success of your STR business.

Meet Todd, Who Made Over $100,000 in Direct Bookings   

Todd manages several cozy cabin rentals in scenic locations—four in the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and the other three in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia. All cabin rentals have home amenities, and everything guests may need for a relaxing getaway.

Todd has a custom site, overlookcabinrentals.com, with a Hospitable property search widget. He is one of our users who have had the most success generating direct bookings, making them an inspiration for hosts looking to gain more control over their bookings and business. So, we asked Todd to share his top tips for optimizing direct bookings while managing other OTA reservations.

You can watch the full video on our YouTube channel and find key highlights from the conversation below.

Building Trust with Potential Guests

Todd points out that if you want to attract many people and convince them to book directly with you, you must have a professional-looking website and "communicate that whole value." This will help you stand out from your competition.

He thinks many travelers choose to book their properties because they opted for a host-only fee option with Hospitable Direct. They clearly state on the website that guests pay zero booking fees when they book directly with them.

"To the guest point of view, when they see it, and they try to book with us, and they're comparing, you know, Airbnb, Vrbo to our direct booking, they are seeing that there're no booking fees, there're no extra hidden service charges, and they appreciate that."

Finding Customers for Direct Bookings

Todd thinks that host should build their online presence and actively market that they offer direct bookings on the online platforms where their potential guests are. For example, Todd is active on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

He uses these popular platforms to share photos of their properties and information about the surrounding area and the activities to get guests excited about where they will be staying. He also encourages people to engage with this content and leave reviews of their stays.

Todd promotes their rentals on Facebook groups directed at travelers, which allows him to find guests who want to book directly with owners to avoid high OTA fees. He also advertises their STR properties on the Facebook marketplace.

"You need to have an identifiable brand. You can't just be Margaret's cabin rentals. You don't want to be a dime a dozen. You want something that sets you aside so people can find you and you're easily searchable."

What Todd Likes about Hospitable Direct

Todd thinks the Hospitable team has done a lot to introduce new features that help hosts simplify daily operations, enhance guest experience, and grow their direct booking business. He likes that Hospitable integrates with Google Vacation Rentals so hosts can have an additional distribution channel and get free traffic to their direct booking website.

What Would Help to Get More Direct Bookings? 

Todd emphasizes that implementing a direct booking strategy is a process, and it takes time to "build the website, build your brand, market your brand, and just keep going." He reveals that they didn't get many direct bookings when they started, but they kept working on marketing their properties.

"It just took time and effort, and we slowly built it up, and now it's kind of the machine feeding itself, its wheels turning. So I always tell people, "Don't get frustrated if you start it and it's not working in two weeks." You know, you need to keep working at it. And keep working at it may take six months. It may take a year for you to start getting traction on that."

Todd also recommends that you focus on building your brand, finding what makes you special and unique, what can set you aside, and then sharing your unique value proposition. It's also important to determine your ideal customers and use their preferred channels to communicate with them and market your business.

"People want to book your place. They probably don't know you; they don't know where you are. They don't know how to do it. And therefore, if you go find those people, you'll start seeing those rewards."